The Hunt
by Ameliamoore
Summary: It has been eighteen years since Jack Harkness had a purpose, a team to keep him running in the right direction. Now all Jack wants is to find The Doctor at any cost.


He leaned against the crumbling wall and inhaled the cold night air deep into his lungs, tipping his head up towards the heavens as the rain washed all remains of that smell of something he wanted so dearly and had been haunting him for longer than he could bear to admit. He couldn't forget a smell like that, one that had once become part of his own identity back then. The trail had ended here, with that damned coat hanging limply from his arms down onto the filthy street below. It was so real, so solid that he was sure in his heart that it could not have been a dream although his head screamed for him to forget the encounter and run in any direction except that from which he came. He was sure that there was something lurking in the darkness back there, something waiting for him if he were to return. It was not just memories which plagued him, there were much more frightening creatures out there than the ones which made home inside his mind.

He had seen extraordinary things, completely crazy things which to any other person might have seemed overwhelming but to Jack they just made him hungry for something he knew that he couldn't have. Without Torchwood, he had no purpose to keep him under control and no friends to tell him when enough was enough. The doctor and he were similar in that way, they both needed somebody beside them for the sake of sanity. Gwen had Reece and Anwen to look after then, she couldn't be the same girl that he wished for to keep him company. He saw them, now and again, but kept his distance except on special occasions, he owed it to them to let them live a normal life, to let everything which he had put them through fade into something softer and less real. They were growing older every day, while he stayed forever stuck in a state which never allowed him to keep up with his friends.

He hadn't been able to see Anwen for ten years now, always 'just missing' her as Gwen put it. She was a grown woman practically, far to old to fail to notice that her mother's friend had not aged a day since her birth. They kept everything which had happened in the past tucked away, locked up inside Gwen but like a prisoner he could see it trying to break its way out of the cell, leaking into her every day life. He feared that if she got much older then she could start blurting out things about gloves which can reanimate the dead and sewer-dwelling aliens and would be classed as unstable.

The 21st century was meant to be when it all changed, but the humans were still what they do best; denying everything and blaming it on nonsense such as gas leeks and hallucinogenic drugs in the water supply. He wanted nothing more than to track down the man in the blue box, he was lonely and ready to risk his life for the sake of adventure. He was tired of watching everyone around him crumble, and the doctor was the only person who he was not about to loose. If only he could get inside that TARDIS again, he would never leave. They could travel together until the end of time, Jack always healing and the doctor always regenerating. They would never have to loose those closest to them again, for if all they had was each other then it would take more than age to tear them apart. They still many planets to see, and an awful lot of running to do. Running with the doctor was the best thing he could imagine, always towards somewhere better and brighter and a hell of a lot more exciting that 21st century Cardiff.

The rain slowed to a dreary drizzle and soon the only sounds were the far-off thundering of the train and the rhythmic dripping of the water from the cracked drainpipe. His shoes were soaked through and covered in a thick layer of grey mud, his shirt buttoned all wrong and his usually perfect hair then too long and sticking up in angular points at the nape of his neck. He had waited so very long, he was beginning to lose the will to continue. He knew that he should leave Cardiff and find himself a new life, but he know that there was no way he could leave even for a minute. The rift was here, and he wasn't going to miss him again. The Doctor had a tendency to arrive in irregular intervals these days, he could park here in 300 years and yet to him only a few weeks might have passed since they last met.

He never knew which face would appear even if he did, so he had to be careful. If any regeneration before regen. nine turned up then he would have to keep his distance, they had not met yet and he knew to to mess with the course of history. Of future. He was never sure which that was. Still, he couldn't resist now and again to walk behind him in the street during a recharge just to be close to him. Every man which stepped out of that thing was different, as if the memories had been transplanted into a variety of strangers with varying levels of knowledge. The eleven with the big chin was his favourite regeneration so far, he was undeniably a sight for sore eyes whenever he popped up. The last time it has been him along with Amy and Rory, the time before it had been regen. ten with the great hair and rose. He wondered if the doctor knew how strange it was for him to be stuck in the one time zone, never sure who he would meet when the day came. He was pretty sure that the oldest doctor he had seen so far was his eleventh regeneration, and every one before then had turned up. It was becoming an obsession, surviving each day just waiting for that wonderful, crazy man to turn up and know him. Seeing an earlier version was like looking at a ghost, undeniably there but looking right through him as if he were any other man in a busy Cardiff town centre.


End file.
